The years were as seconds, and
despite his confusions, Laruebius found ways to be happy. But, more often
than not, despite the occasional night raid, he was inexorably bored.

It had been a hundred years since
he and Gareth had torched the Temple of the Flipping Coin, and Laruebius’
progress had been staggering. A refined swagger that bespoke power and menace
had replaced his awkward gait. His tongue had become sharp, and the strength
in his body was staggering. Laruebius knew that the number of mortals that
could resist him had to be dwindling, but he had never really struggled against
one worthy of a test of his prowess. For all he knew, Gareth may have been
lying to him about the power within them, but Laruebius knew that it was a
dangerous thing to contradict his always-volatile master. Still, questions
swirled.

One evening, as Laruebius stared
out of a bedroom window, high on the third floor of Garethview Manor, he felt
a pull, as if a chain had wrapped itself about him and were pulling him downward.

No, he realized as his eyes widened
at the gleaming lights of the city below. As evening fell upon the town, he
knew that a veritable throng would take to the streets in search of nightly
amusement. The city would soon be aglow, bathed in soft torch flames as the
soldiers lit hundreds of street lamps. One by one, two by two, they would
all come out from their hiding, dressed in their finest attire, and haunt
the sidewalks, window shopping, discussing the latest fashions, eating at
cafés and drinking in shadow-drenched pubs. No, he thought again, no,
he was not being pulled downward to the rocks below, but outward, toward the
city and out into its torch-lit embrace.

“What are you staring at,
Laruebius?”

He started, shaken from his contemplation
by his master’s voice.

“Nothing, Master Gareth,”
he said, flopping his chin into the palm of his hand, his elbow resting on
the windowsill.

Gareth got closer, and put a hand
on his shoulder. “Are you hungry?”

Laruebius flinched. “No,
Master, just curious.”

“What about?” Gareth
hissed, his eyes narrowing.

The younger vampire felt an urge
to cringe forward, could imagine Gareth’s face draining of patience,
his breath quickening. He took a deep breath, but could think of no reason
why Gareth should be so angry with him. It did not matter anyway, he thought,
nothing would change for him, nothing ever could. Not when you were immortal.

Laruebius threw a hand out toward
the openness beyond, to the flickering lights of the city. “Them,”
he said. “I am curious about them.”

Gareth’s eyes widened now.
“About the food? Why would you be curious about the food?”

Laruebius could only shrug. He
knew how content his Master was in his ways, how unwilling. The young vampire
felt his lip curl up in a sneer at the thought. He knew that no matter how
tempting, Gareth would never go down there, never make any attempt to mingle
– nor would he ever understand Laruebius’ true desire, the real
reason he wanted to be in the city, amongst the “food”.

Laruebius was lonely.

Feeling his Master’s penetrating
gaze, he was suddenly inspired to answer.

“I just need to be in the
fresh air again, Master.”

Gareth released his grip and stalked
across the floor, his boots clacking on the marble tile. “You do?”
he said, the cacophonic echo in his voice (or rather, voices) rising again.

“Yes, Master.”

“And why is that?”

Laruebius put his back to the
window and took another breath, letting his eyelids droop over his eyes.

“Does it matter?”

Gareth’s mouth widened.
Laruebius opened his eyes and held his ground, but he felt a tinge of wariness
in the pit of his black heart. The look on the older vampire’s face
could have turned the most stalwart of priests into a quivering child.

“How dare you speak to me
that way, Fledgling?” Gareth took a step. Laruebius flinched but otherwise
remained unmoved. Perhaps a minute passed in deathly silence. And Gareth began
to think.

How far had Laruebius come in
this short time? Gareth looked him up and down. He could feel the darkness
swirling about his protégé more fully that any other he had
ever made, could feel the Embrace thrumming through Laruebius like a pulsating
river. The young vampire had matured startlingly faster than any other Gareth
had ever seen, or even heard about, which made him worry. Worse, did something
remain? There were some Fledglings whose Embrace could not fully counteract
their former passions. Was Laruebius still aching for the forests of his elven
homelands in some subconscious way? And how far would Laruebius go to get
what he wanted? While Gareth held no love for his apprentice, neither did
he harbor the desire to end him….

But if it came to it…

Gareth turned abruptly and scoffed.
“Go. Go down to the food and become filthy.” His voice became
a single whisper again. He stomped down the steps and Laruebius sighed.

Gareth shouted from the stairwell.
“If I smell them on you, I swear I’ll tear the flesh from you.”

Laruebius, suddenly alone, felt
his lip curl now, and did not stop it. A growl escaped his lips in a low hum,
and the cement lip of the window behind him shattered in his grasp.

“Just promise me you won’t
eat it, Gareth.”

As he stood before the city walls,
feeling the last whisp of wolf-form leaving his body, Laruebius smiled. The
trip had been swift, like a dream, and he could feel the sensations of living
beings getting closer and closer. He felt sweat beading on his forehead as
he stood before the gates, his eyes stinging a bit from the bright torches
which illuminated the entryway, throwing ominous shadows across his form.
Laruebius could feel his mouth simply ache with anticipation, and he watched
mesmerized as his fingers slowly waved and clenched and unclenched. A farmer
walked by, peddling vegetables. Laruebius could smell the stink of animal
all around the tired old man, could hear his heart beating. He allowed the
man to bump into him, just to remind himself that he was there, that this
was not some opium-induced fantasy like his Master so often offered him.

The thought of Gareth nearly spoiled
the moment for him, but only for as long as it took his powerful sense of
hearing to hear voices – not his own, not the terrifying sound of a
hundred tortured souls that was his Master’s, but living, breathing
voices, full of hope and a false sense of security.

Two men haggled over a fur coat
in the merchant’s district. A couple of young lovers shared sweat and
flesh in a brothel. Someone spilled a tankard of ale on the street, and an
urchin wasted no time in scooping some up in a curled hand. And Laruebius
could hear it all, every breath, every glorious, pathetic syllable.

The vampire stood staring at the
ornate arches before him, their towering steel gates sporting fresh black
paint. Just as he passed through the iron fence, he heard a child shout aloud:
“olly-olly-ox-and-free” and then squeal with excitement as her
game came to an end.

Laruebius felt his eyes lift and
dart about, looking for the child in her revel, but he never found her.

Several times that night did he
again have to remind himself that the evening was not a dream. It seemed so
surreal - the smell of blood, baking bread, roasted chicken, lamp oil, and
pipe smoke. He eventually worked up the courage to descend from the alley
shadows, and he became a member of the throng, of the hundreds of window-shoppers
and merchants. Laruebius considered it to be quite like the sensation of becoming
mist, but better.

As quickly as the night had descended,
it left, and Laruebius did not return home. He took refuge in a local hotel,
and waited eagerly for another breath of the fresh, night city air. When finally
it came, the next evening found him doing the same, walking through the city,
conversing and enjoying as he eased along. Again, he did not return when morning
came. For weeks the nights came the same way, and soon Laruebius found no
reason to return to Gareth Manor. He only returned as a courtesy to his Master,
fearing that he would command him never to return to the city, dooming him
to remain in the coffin that was their home. But Laruebius found his Master
constantly apathetic, and never pressed the point. He took to staying at the
local inns rather than sleeping in the huge mansion, and took the occasional
prostitute as a meal.

Thus it was that the young vampire
found Lily.

During one of Laruebius’
late night jaunts, roaming the streets, he came upon a whore lying in the
gutter, her head gashed deeply. The night was late, and Laruebius could feel
the coming approach of the dawn but perhaps three hours away. Having no desire
to be caught out in the lethal rays of morning, he at first decided to leave
her.

Like the pull he felt before,
however, something within him would not let go.

“Can you speak, girl?”
he asked, shaking her roughly and opening her eyes with his long fingernails.

She groaned once and nodded. “I
can hear you as well, milord, no need to shout.”

Laruebius smiled. She was very
pretty. Dirty, of course, but pretty nonetheless. She had black hair and milky
eyes and white skin, and Laruebius knew that his elven self would have fallen
head over heels for the tainted beauty.

“Headache?” he asked.

“Hmm?” she stammered
and struggled for her balance.

“A headache. You have been
careless with your liquor, it seems.” With that, he brushed away a lock
of her hair and exposed the wound on her forehead. It was thin, but deep,
and blood was coasting down the curve of her forehead. His fangs began to
ache within his mouth, but he resisted the urge to take her. It was hard for
him as pretty as she was not to sink his teeth into her then, the smell of
the blood caressing his nose like that. She was however, a whore, an elven
whore, but a whore nonetheless. “Bad blood,” he muttered.

“What?” She asked,
a silly smile on her face.

“Your name, I wondered your
name.”

“Lily,” she said after
a moment. “Call me Lily.”

“Is that your name?”

“No,” she said, “but
you can call me that.” Her smile widened to reveal a set of pearly teeth.

And her fangs.

They were long and thin, and so
straight that Laruebius could tell that she, like him, was a prodigy of a
Master. Laruebius smiled. He had never met another vampire save Gareth, and
was eager to know one. Especially one so pretty.

“Surprised?” she said.
“I’m like you, aren’t I?” She staggered and laughed
and nearly tripped over herself. “Or is it that you are like me?”

“I think both,” he
said.

Laruebius eyes eyed her cautiously.
A vampire in such standings (or such ‘wallowing’ or the case may
have been) was a dangerous thing. He had heard of vampires whose Embrace had
been so contrary to their natures that it drove them insane, and usually,
ended up destitute or dead. This one certainly seemed the former, but there
was something else about Lily that Laruebius could not put his finger on;
she had a formality about her that he found intoxicating, strangely askew
from the norm of prostitutes, but that was all he could tell of her, so dark
and alluring was she.

“You have been at work this
evening,” he said with a nod.

Her smile took in her ears. “Not
yet. Do you have a place where we could speak a little more frankly? The street
is musty, and I need to wash my hair.”

Laruebius’ instincts told
him not to, told him to kill the wretch and let the shadows take her, but
something that same desire called out to him, begged him to find company apart
from his own and find refuge from Gareth’s awful presence. Against his
better judgement, he gave in, taking her by the crook of her elbow and led
her across the street.

“There,” she said,
pointing a finger at a three story building further down the street. A sign
swung on its hinges outside the porch.

“An inn?” he asked.

“Of course, unless you know
another.”

Laruebius had heard much from
Gareth on the dangers of traveling with another vampire. While he himself
was familiar with the Foot and Cork Inn, he had no desire to have to explain
his companion’s presence to the priests who were known to haunt the
inn. They were known to lay in wait for the dregs to slump in from the streets,
and enough local superstition kept the priests well armed with various means
to undo the undead. But the smell of Lily’s hair made the choice for
him.

William the bellhop took good care
of them. The room he showed was furnished in the noble fashion, with a large
tub in the washroom filled with hot water and a massive double bed with long
oaken posts.

Laruebius stepped in and drew
the windows shut. He ordered a sniffit and some towels from the bellhop, and
then sat in a chair by the door.

“Leave them open,”
she said, flopping upon the bed and burying herself within the sheets.

He smiled at her, and watched
her lithe form slip into the bed.

“Comfortable?” he
asked.

“Very,” she purred,
and stretched her long arms to the ceiling.

With a thought, Laruebius opened
the windows from across the room.

She stopped squirming in the bed
and looked incredulously at him. She closed her eyes and fell within herself,
and when she opened them again, her eyes were clear and her posture straightened,
but she still gazed at Laruebius with wonder.

“Thank you,” he said,
relieved that she had finally forced herself to heal from her drunken stupor.
With vampires, it was a matter of choice whether or not to be intoxicated.
“I was wondering when you would do that.”

“How did you do that?”
she asked, pointing to the windows. “Are you a mage or something?”

“Hmm?”

“The curtains. You opened
the curtains without touching them.”

Laruebius smiled. “I called
you ‘Bad Blood’ earlier. I suppose I should have called you ‘New
Blood’. How long since your change?”

“From…?”

Laruebius’ eyebrows rose.
“Mortality,” he said, searching for the right word.

Lily frowned, her lips puckering
in a sweet pout. “Months,” she said. “And the bitch didn’t
even stay in the city very long to show me anything. I’ve heard the
Masters are so supposed to stay. Is that true?”

“Now it is my turn to be
shocked,” he said, opening the door for the bellhop and taking the wine.
He tossed the towels onto the bed and poured her a glass. William left with
a large tip.

“Yes, Masters are supposed
to stay with their protégés.”

“Says who?”

“The Séance.”

Lily cocked her head.

“Do you mean like…”
she said, waving her hands about as if she were looking into a crystal ball.

“No,” Laruebius said
with a chuckle. “The term Séance is actually a bit of a sick
joke. You see, the last vampire to be an accepted member of any but our churches
was a diviner for the Church of the Morning Rising.”

“What happened?”

Laruebius took a sip and smiled
wickedly. He liked this story.

“She was young and beautiful,
and not without a great deal of power herself. Her Master had been quite crushed
when she joined the Morning Rising, and decided to take revenge.”

“And?”

“While conducting a séance
for a Head Priest to contact his father, her Master appeared, and legend has
it that she called down a great Yampiyais, or “vampire demon”,
and attacked the church, its ministers and everyone.”

“And the vampire?”

“The Yampiyais pulled her
heart out through her mouth and made her bleed to death. Supposedly, shortly
after, the Yampiyais formed a Council formed for the Vampire Nation, a bunch
of doddering fools if you ask me, and they made a system of law called the
Séance in honor of her. More like a mockery, but you see the point.”

Lily’s eyebrows raised dubiously.
“Well,” she said, sitting up and crossing her long pale legs.
Laruebius stared at her thighs for a moment and cleared his throat. “The
one that made me was a whore,” she said.

“Like you?”

She pouted. “I’m not
a whore. I’m a lady of the evening.”

“Oh,” he laughed.
“Tell me about her.”

She thought for a moment. “No,
tell me about Gareth.”

“How did you know his name?”

“Apparently, the bitch could
read thoughts. She raped me and then took my blood and then I could read thoughts.
Even trade, I suppose. Did Gareth force you?”

“More or less.”

She looked a bit concerned. “I’m
sorry. I know how it is. Is he still with you?”

“Yes.”

“That is good, I guess.
What is your name?”

He grinned. “Can’t
you read my thoughts?”

“Yes, but I want to hear
you say it.”

“Laruebius.”

“Lah-roo-bee-uhs….,”
she said, turning it over in her mouth slowly. “And does Gareth know
you are here?”

“Yes.”

“Does he care?”

“No.”

“Good. Laruebius, could
I massage your back?”

He balked at the request, but
not when her delicate hands found the creases in his neck.

“You are good,” he
sighed, and settled in to his chair. A moment later, however, he flinched,
and on impulse grabbed Lily’s wrist. His eyes began to glow, and his
skin became as ice.

“What’d I do?”
Lily demanded, her own strength, though very considerable, dwarfed by the
older vampire’s. He held on tightly, and a long pause came between them
as he calmed down. The glow in his eyes returned to their normal blue, and
he sat down again, leaving her dazed on the floor.

Laruebius reached up and felt
his neck. A sharp pain went through his back, and he remembered the wound.

“I am sorry,” he said
with a grimace. “An old wound.”

She crossed her arms. “How
old?”

“Few weeks.”

“I thought we could heal
fast or something,” she said, her eyebrows raised.

He shook his head. “Not
when a Master wounds you. It could last for months if the one who Embraced
you even scratches you. The one who made you can unmake you. Nature’s
way.”

“Come in! Come in!”
he bade, and with that, William led two young women into the room, barely
of sixteen.

“Thank you William,”
Laruebius said, standing. He flipped the boy a coin. “Same deal. Very
quiet.”

“Yes sir, very quiet,”
William said, leaving.

“Sit,” Laruebius commanded
the girls, who obediently sat on the bed.

“Why are we here?”
the blonde chirped. The other one, a brunette, slapped her friend’s
leg. They were so young, he thought. And laughed.

“Don’t talk!”
the brunette scolded.

Lily smiled, liking where this
was going. “What is this, Laruebius?”

He shook his head. “Disrobe,”
he commanded, and within a few moments, the girls were nude.

“Other ladies of the evening,”
he said to Lily. “Do you know each other?”

Lily caught on. “They look
familiar,” she purred, and sat on the bed.

“Why did you speak, girl?”
Laruebius said with a wicked grin. She gave no reply. “Your brunette
friend has been here before. Did she not tell you my rules?”

The blonde rolled her eyes and
then lay flat on her back.

“Let’s just get this
over with. It’s not my first night, you know. I have done this before.”
She sneered defiantly at them, lifting her nose contemptuously in the air.

The air grew cold.

“Have you?” the elder
vampire said slowly.

A shiver went up Lily’s
spine at the sound. Looking up at Laruebius, she nearly trembled at the change
in him. His eyes glowed angrily. His hands twitched slowly.

“Larue-” she began,
only to be cut off by a snarl which came from his throat.

“I told you not to speak,
human.,” he whispered.

With that Laruebius grabbed the
girl by the waist and lifted her to her feet, putting her in line with his
horrible stare. She began to scream, but within the span of a slight breath,
his gaze locked the girl’s body to his will. Her neck went rigid, and
her eyes clouded with submission. In that split second, she fell completely
in love with Laruebius, and felt his touch as if it were that of a god. He
blinked, however, and the moment was gone, her feelings for him gone. It was
too much, and so she screeched. Then, he bit into her with a lightning snap
of his mouth, and sapped her of blood while the girl continued to scream.
It went on for several moments, and Lily soon began to squirm anxiously while
watching Laruebius feast. Soon, the girl stopped screaming, and slumped in
his arms, lifeless.

The brunette took her cue, and
reclined her head and closed her eyes.

Laruebius smiled, still holding
his gory package. Carefully, so as not to soil his clothes, he lay the blonde
girl down on the floor. He looked to her friend.

“I like you very much, Karen,
you know that, don’t you?” Laruebius said.

She nodded.

“Karen has given me much
blood since I came to this city. You love me, don’t you, Karen?”

Karen smiled a bit, and nodded.

“You see, Lily, Karen is
only half-human. Her ears are a bit pointed, you see?”

Lily sidled over to her and sat
down by the nude girl. She lifted the girl’s hair back and touched her
ears. “Very pretty,” she said.

“Karen, I love this new
woman here, her name is Lily. Is that alright?”

She nodded.

“I want Lily to drink of
you tonight.”

Karen sat close to Lily then put
her arms around the vampire woman.

“Karen will let you drink
of her, just not too much. Isn’t that right, Karen?”

The girl nodded.

Lily was shocked at the ease of
which Laruebius commanded the girl. It was as if the waif wanted to obey him,
wanted to be completely submissive to him. So different was his manner than
that of the vampire that had made her. So careful and upright.

Lily gingerly opened her mouth
and lay her fangs on the teen’s throat. She suckled at her slowly, drinking
of the young blood. Karen’s face became white a few minutes later, and
she began to whimper, and so Laruebius put his hand on Lily’s shoulder.

“That’s enough, Lily.
We have all of the blood here in this dead one for the rest of the night.”

Karen stood and kissed Laruebius
on the cheek as she left, closing the door behind her.

Laruebius drained his glass. He
took a deep breath and stared at Lily. She looked so beautiful. Her skin like
milk was simply dripping with gore.

He whispered, “Go ahead,
my dear.”

Lily dove into the dead girl's
wound, and drank long gulps. For an hour she swallowed the young woman’s
life-force until she had her fill.

When it was done, the two vampires
lay the girl in the fireplace and set her corpse ablaze.

“I hate it when they talk,”
was the only eulogy Laruebius gave for the girl.

Laruebius stoked the flames into
a warm glow as the whore’s body became as ash. The smell became pungent,
and so Laruebius tossed a few pine chips from his vest pocket into the fire.
No one would ever know that flesh burned in that hotel.

Lily went into the other room
and bathed. When she emerged from the bath, her hair was brushed, her body
wrapped in a fuzzy red robe, and her face white and smiling.

“Pull up a chair,”
Laruebius bade her, and poured her a glass.

The two vampires sat for a while,
sipping wine before the fire.

“This is good wine, Laruebius,”
Lily said.

“Yes it is. Very robust.”

“I like the sound of that
– robust. What does it mean?”

Laruebius looked at Lily, an anxious
gleam in his eye. Never had he known, but always he had wondered what it would
be to bed one of his own kind, a child of the night.

“It means full of flavor.”
He took her hand and led her onto his lap. He kissed her deeply with his lips
and pushed her robe onto the floor. In one fluid movement, Laruebius took
her wrist and bit into it lightly. Then, he and Lily made love. Nicking at
one another with their long fangs and reveling in one another’s skin,
they were like roses intertwined, their thorns always piercing. They ripped
one another open and howled like demon wolves into the night sky that hung
about their opened window. Their unholy union raised no alarum throughout
the city, though, for any and all that heard them were too terrified to speak.

When it was over, they lay in
bed and spoke for hours, long into the night, and then into the next day.
The evening after, they left the hotel, and Laruebius never saw the city again.

The content of Villain is the property and copyright
of Heath
Harper, and is not to be published or redistributed without
permission.